


the family tries to sing lullabies

by yulealittlebigger



Category: Floyd Collins - Landau/Guettel
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Deathfic, Incest, M/M, Sibling Incest, Siblings, Yuletide, Yuletide 2011
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 20:24:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yulealittlebigger/pseuds/yulealittlebigger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As he waits for the end, Floyd thinks about tunnels, echoes, and Homer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the family tries to sing lullabies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ipreferaviators](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ipreferaviators/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, ipreferaviators! Thanks to E for looking this over.

  


He thinks about tunnels.

He thinks about the universe beneath the soil -- a universe of rock and air and twisting constellations of darkness, and he thinks of tunnels, tunnels like barren veins wending their way through the rock until they join and form arteries. As if all Western Kentucky is a newborn rolled flat on its back, its hills and valleys soft and new like flesh, its vital organs pumping away underneath the surface.

And here he is clogging up the works.

There's time down here. Had I but world enough and time -- he heard that somewhere ages ago, doesn't remember where, but he's got plenty of both. He's thinking of the earth lying there dozing off while he crawled through its intestines like a tapeworm -- growing bigger and bigger as he fed off every success, until look what happened: he got stuck.

All this time he's thought of himself like some hero, doing the earth a favor -- bringing the wonders of Kentucky to the outside world. But to the earth he's just a parasite.

He's fixing to die down here.

He thinks about echoes.

The echo of his voice in these underground halls. The echo of locusts in the sycamores down in the hollows, cool summer evenings. Homer's laughter bouncing off quarry walls and his skin when he leans close. The echo of his first kiss: the echo of the waxy taste of Betsy May's lipstick, and the way his lips buzzed and buzzed for days, til finally to make Homer shut up about it he passed the kiss along just to show him what he meant. How Homer's lips left a stain that never did wipe off.

The echo of Homer’s arms wrapped tight around his waist while the two of them clung to the lowest branch of that birch tree down by the quarry pool. How he squeezed until Floyd felt dizzy, breathless, and then let go and let him fall straight down, down, down.

“I’ll tell you a riddle,” Homer had said, his voice soft to match the pressure of his fingertips running over Floyd’s back. “But you know what you gotta do for every guess you get wrong.”

“So tell me already,” Floyd had answered, closing his eyes and laying his head down against the grass. The sun bronzing his hair, the scritch of an ant crawling up his outstretched arm; the damp cold soil giving way beneath his fingernails as he carved a circle in the dirt next to the fishing hole. Homer’s fingers chasing the trail of water that drained down his spine like it was a gutter spout, while he spiraled his own way down inside the earth, feeling the topsoil give and wondering if he could keep digging like Johnson grass, all the way to Jericho or to the center of the earth, whichever of the two was closetest.

“Here goes,” said Homer, slipping his index finger over the dip at the base of Floyd’s spine. “What’s hard like marble and soft like shale -- smooth like calcite and -- “

“Calcite ain’t smooth, Homer, you idiot.”

“Shut up, it is too.”

“You ever get your hand on a piece of gypsum down in them caves that wasn’t rough all over?”

Homer started snickering, and he took his hand away from where he’d been sliding it further along the rim of Floyd’s swim trunks, probably to cover his mouth with it. He’d been teasing him like he had the balls to go further, which Floyd knew he hain’t, because Homer never went after anything til he was sure it was going to get him exactly what he wanted in return. And now he’d done gone and taken his hand away and Floyd should’ve showed some enthusiasm, or something, stead of lying there like a fish.

“Well, fine, that works too,” said Homer, between giggles. “What’s hard like marble, soft like shale, rough all over like calcite, pliable like sandstone --”

“Homer Collins, you filthy-minded --”

Floyd flipped over and caught Homer still with his hand pressed to his mouth, his face going red at the sight of him. He reached up and yanked it away, pulling him down to where Floyd lay stretched out against the grass.

“Reckon you know what it is, then?” said Homer, sliding easily against him. He was lithe and agile like a water strider -- Floyd could barely catch him in his hands at all, let alone when Homer saw fit to let him like he did now, hovering just apart from Floyd’s body, til Floyd could feel the hum of energy vibrating between them.

“Well, I don’t know now,” said Floyd. “I figure you better ought to show me.”

“That ain’t in the rules,” said Homer, dipping his lips close enough to be an intentional taunt. “You gotta guess and give me a kiss for every one you get wrong.”

“Fine, then,” said Floyd. “Butterfly.”

The grin slid across Homer’s face. “Wrong.” He leaned in.

Floyd felt the right answer against his thigh, (rough like calcite, expanding like the whole earth getting bigger and bigger just for the two of them, one day to be all theirs, all their own) and he pulled Homer down and guessed wrong, and guessed wrong, and guessed wrong.

And the echo still persists, even when his lungs are shrieking loud enough to beat the devil, screaming out for water, so loud he shouldn’t be able to still hear the sound of Homer’s laugh when he gets good and ready, the way it just bubbles out of him like his body is a hot spring, a beautiful pure clear-hearted aquifer, all there for Floyd to just dive right down under the surface til he’s liable to drown in it.

He’s gonna drown down here instead, a lonely death, halved in two. Homer’ll take the pieces of his heart and go give them to someone else, maybe -- some other grown-up exploring boy who’ll promise him adventure and maybe even be able to deliver (but that’s not true, is it, they’ve had adventures as wild and wide as from here to the moon, just the two of them), or maybe he’ll settle down with some young Elsie from the country, a quiet reliable girl who can raise a family of boys he’ll name after Floyd, and maybe the damn Croghans’ll take over the Crystal Cave and the Sand Cave and the salt mines and the tourists and all, and they’ll never know, any of them, never know, just like he’ll never know glory down here silenced in the bowels of the earth.

But that’s not true, is it. They’ve known glory together, the two of them. They’ve swum and dove and caved and explored and discovered and tooled and fucked, oh, yeah, they’ve fucked and lusted and gotten their hands dirty and all over each other. They’ve made these caves sing, the two of them.

He’s going to die down here. But he’s not going to die quiet.

He hasn’t used his vocal chords in days. There are hours -- if that -- left. The hallucinations have already come and gone; he’s done with that false blessing.

It takes him a bit of practicing to get the sound out, and his lungs screech from the effort. He never knew how much energy it took just to make noise -- that he’d take back every meaningless whoop and shout and holler if it meant he had the voice now when he needs it the most.

He manages, eventually -- first a raspy squeak, and then another, and then he digs down around inside him for one final yell, one final call down into that massive cave, and his lungs scream in agony but they fill up with air, and he shouts:

“I love you, Homer Collins! You hear that? I love you, all right!”

And the sound travels out into the tunnel, away and down into the cave.

He thinks maybe he hears an echo.

It’s enough.


End file.
